Based on the well-known results of classical potential theory, viz. the limit and jump relations for layer integrals, a numerically viable and e±cient multiscale method of approximating the disturbing potential from gravity anomalies is established on regular surfaces, i.e., on telluroids of ellipsoidal or even more structured geometric shape. The essential idea is to use scale dependent regularizations of the layer potentials occurring in the integral formulation of the linearized Molodensky problem to introduce scaling functions and wavelets on the telluroid. As an application of our multiscale approach some numerical examples are presented on an ellipsoidal telluroid.

This work is concerned with a nonlinear Galerkin method for solving the incompressible Navier-Stokes equation on the sphere. It extends the work of Debussche, Marion,Shen, Temam et al. from one-dimensional or toroidal domains to the spherical geometry. In the first part, the method based on type 3 vector spherical harmonics is introduced and convergence is indicated. Further it is shown that the occurring coupling terms involving three vector spherical harmonics can be expressed algebraically in terms of Wigner-3j coefficients. To improve the numerical efficiency and economy we introduce an FFT based pseudo spectral algorithm for computing the Fourier coefficients of the nonlinear advection term. The resulting method scales with O(N^3), if N denotes the maximal spherical harmonic degree. The latter is demonstrated in an extensive numerical example.

In this paper we introduce a multiscale technique for the analysis of deformation phenomena of the Earth. Classically, the basis functions under use are globally defined and show polynomial character. In consequence, only a global analysis of deformations is possible such that, for example, the water load of an artificial reservoir is hardly to model in that way. Up till now, the alternative to realize a local analysis can only be established by assuming the investigated region to be flat. In what follows we propose a local analysis based on tools (Navier scaling functions and wavelets) taking the (spherical) surface of the Earth into account. Our approach, in particular, enables us to perform a zooming-in procedure. In fact, the concept of Navier wavelets is formulated in such a way that subregions with larger or smaller data density can accordingly be modelled with a higher or lower resolution of the model, respectively.

The Earth's surface is an almost perfect sphere. Deviations from its spherical shape are less than 0,4% of its radius and essentially arise from its rotation. All equipotential surfaces are nearly spherical, too. In consequence, multiscale modelling of geoscientifically relevant data on the sphere involving rotational symmetry of the trial functions used for the approximation plays an important role. In this paper we deal with isotropic kernel functions showing local support and (one-dimensional) polynomial structure (briefly called isotropic finite elements) for reconstructing square--integrable functions on the sphere. Essential tool is the concept of multiresolution analysis by virtue of the spherical up function. The main result is a tree algorithm in terms of (low--order) isotropic finite elements.

A new class of locally supported radial basis functions on the (unit) sphere is introduced by forming an infinite number of convolutions of ''isotropic finite elements''. The resulting up functions show useful properties: They are locally supported and are infinitely often differentiable. The main properties of these kernels are studied in detail. In particular, the development of a multiresolution analysis within the reference space of square--integrable functions over the sphere is given. Altogether, the paper presents a mathematically significant and numerically efficient introduction to multiscale approximation by locally supported radial basis functions on the sphere.